th, at first, trembled at the inexperience of her charioteer; but
'she soon,' said Sydney, 'raised my wages, and considered me an
excellent Jehu.' 'Mr. Brown,' said Sydney to one of the tradesmen of
York, through the streets of which he found it difficult to drive, 'your
streets are the narrowest, in Europe,'--'Narrow, sir? there's plenty of
room for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half to
spare!'

Let us see him in his busy peaceful life, digging an hour or two every
day in his garden to avoid sudden death, by preventing corpulency; then
galloping through a book, and when his family laughed at him for so soon
dismissing a quarto, saying, 'Cross-examine me, then,' and going well
through the ordeal. Hear him, after finishing his morning's writing,
saying to his wife, 'There, Kate, it's done: do look over it; put the
dots to the i's, and cross the t's:' and off he went to his walk,
surrounded by his children, who were his companions and confidants. See
him in the lane, talking to an old woman whom he had taken into his gig
as she was returning from market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge
from her; or administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and
animals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day he
declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting 'God save the King'
about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red cow by an over-dose of
castor-oil; and Peter the Cruel, so called because the groom once said
he had a cruel face, took two boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in
his mash, without ill consequences.

See him, too, rushing out after dinner--for he had a horror of long
sittings after that meal--to look at his 'scratcher.'

He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, 'I am all for cheap
luxuries, even for animals; now all animals have a passion for
scratching their backbones; they break down your gates and palings to
effect this. Look! there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole,
resting on a high and a low post, adapted to every height, from a horse
to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn: you have no
idea how popular it is; I have not had a gate broken since I put it up;
I have it in all my fields.'

Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be burned instead
of candles; and working-people were brought in and fed with broth, or
with rice, or with porridge, to see which was the most satisfying diet.
Economy was made amu